COPPS GOES PARBAKED FOR ARTISAN BREAD LINE

ROSEANNE HARPER

STEVENS POINT, Wis. -- Copps Corp., venturing into parbaked, artisan breads for the first time, found that presentation and demos are key to harvesting the best sales, officials said.

When the company unveiled the branded breads at all its stores, it built large, dedicated displays on walk-around, slant tables that have a prominent spot in the in-store bakery.

"That's something we discovered at the test store [where the breads got an eight-week trial run] -- that these breads move much better when they're displayed by themselves," said Bob Beaudoin, Copps' bakery operations manager. "We do marry our own foccacias with them, but it's all under the heading of artisan breads."

The setup also gives the retailer the opportunity to have someone there at that display, talking about the different varieties and demoing them with some dipping oils.

"We demo the bread every weekend at every store, and we'll continue doing that. We took the demo away one weekend at the test store and found that sales dropped by a third, but with the demo person there, we sell so much of it that it pays for the labor, and then some," he said.

Artisan breads are a product Copps felt necessitated a strong sampling program, since in this part of the country most people have been raised on soft, white bread and dinner rolls, Beaudoin said. But customers buy these when they taste them. On a Saturday, a high-volume Copps store will sell at least 50 loaves. The hands-down customer favorite is roasted garlic, but the other varieties -- sourdough boule, semolina, ciabatta, country wheat, country white and raisin pecan -- are doing well also, he added.

Beaudoin explained that this is the first time the company has gone all-out with an artisan bread line, and that's because his distributor told him about the Ecce Panis line. The Carlstadt, N.J., bread company's products are parbaked and shipped frozen.

Copps is retailing all Ecce Panis varieties, except raisin pecan, for $2.99 a loaf. Raisin pecan is $3.99.

"We've been toying with the idea of an artisan bread program for maybe six years. We had tried a bake-off line, and then we did some ourselves for a while, and we've talked to other vendors who have good products but they weren't conducive to a retail environment; they were more for food service," he said.

Beaudoin said Ecce Panis had impressive product packaging and store support. The windowed, maroon-and-white bags help create a great-looking display, too, he said.

The bread company had its roots in Manhattan, where it had supplied upscale restaurants with its fresh products for years before it began delivering select varieties to area supermarkets and specialty stores. Then, just two years ago, it launched its parbaked line to meet the demands of retailers outside the New York area.

Currently, the number of individual supermarkets that carry Ecce Panis products stands at 2,500, stretched across the United States, said Russell Chapman, Ecce Panis president. Indeed, its parbaked business is growing at such a pace that the company is in the process of building a second production facility in East Brunswick, N.J.

While artisan breads have been big on the East and West Coasts for some time, Ecce Panis has taken the lead in introducing much of the Midwest to this genre. Plum fennel is one of the company's new and more eclectic varieties, and "it's selling like hotcakes in Cincinnati" at Kroger stores, Chapman said.

Kroger took on several varieties of the Ecce Panis parbaked breads at its flagship store, located in Cincinnati, a little more than a year ago, and then last month, it rolled them out to another 40 stores in that marketing area. Other selected Kroger marketing areas have followed suit, he said.